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MIND and COSMOS INTRODUCTION '/F Chapter 1 Introduction The aim of this book is to argue that the mind-bodyjprobtem is not — just a local problem, having to do with the relation between mind, brain, and behavior in living animal organisms, but that it invades our understanding of the entire cosmos and its history. The physical sciences and evolutionary biology cannot be kept insulated from it, and I believe a true appreciation of the difficulty of the problem must eventually change our conception of the place of the physical £} sciences in describing the natural order. One of the legitimate tasks of philosophy is to investigate the limits of even the best developed and most successful forms of con­ temporary scientific knowledge. It maybe frustrating to acknowledge, but we are simply at the point in the history of human thought at ^\fi4^A/ which we find ourselves, and our successors will make discoveries and develop forms of understanding of which we have not dreamt. Humans are addicted to the hope for a final reckoning, but intellec­ tual humility requires that we resist the temptation to assume that tools of the kind we now have are in principle sufficient to under­ stand the universe as a whole. Pointing out their limits is a philo- <&£-• sophical task, whoever engages in it, rather than part of the internal pursuit of science—though we can hope that if the limits are recog­ nized, that may eventually lead to the discovery of new forms of ; scientific understanding. Scientists are well aware of how much they 1 Sf MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION '/f don't know, but this is a different kind of problem—not just of evidence favors some form of neutral monism over the traditional acknowledging the limits of what is actually understood but of alternatives of materialism, idealism, and dualism. What I would trying to recognize what can and cannot in principle be understood like to do is to explore the possibilities that are compatible with by certain existing methods. what we know—in particular what we know about how mind and My target is a comprehensive, speculative world picture that is everything connected with it depends on the appearance and devel­ reached by extrapolation from some of the discoveries of biology, opment of living organisms, as a result of the universe's physical, chemistry, and physics—a particular naturalistic Weltanschauung chemical, and then biological evolution. I will contend that these that postulates a hierarchical relation among the subjects of those processes must be reconceived in light of what they have produced, sciences, and the completeness in principle of an explanation of if psychophysical reductionism is false. 0* everything in the universe through their unification. Such a world •I The argument from the failure of psychophysical reductionism ^4 u view is not a necessary condition of the practice of any of those is a philosophical one, but I believe there are independent empir­ < A sciences, and its acceptance or nonacceptance would have no effect •»' ical reasons to be skeptical about the truth of reductionism in on most scientific research. For all I know, most practicing scientists biology. Physico-chemical reductionism in biology is the orthodox may have no opinion about the overarching cosmological questions view, and any resistance to it is regarded as not only scientifically to which this materialist reductionism provides an answer. Their I but politically incorrect. But for a long time I have found the mate­ detailed research and substantive findings do not in general depend Wf rialist account of how we and our fellow organisms came to exist on or imply either that or any other answer to such questions. hard to believe, including the standard version of how the evolu­ But among the scientists and philosophers who do express views tionary process works. The more details we learn about the chemi­ 4, about the natural order as a whole, reductive materialism is widely cal basis of life and the intricacy of the genetic code, the more assumed to be the only serious possibility.1 unbelievable the standard historical account becomes.2 This is just -.•;• The starting point for the argument is the failure of psychophys­ the opinion of a layman who reads widely in the literature that ical reductionism, a position in the philosophy of mind that is largely explains contemporary science to the nonspecialist. Perhaps that motivated by the hope of showing how the physical sciences could literature presents the situation with a simplicity and confidence in principle provide a theory of everything. If that hope is unrealiz­ that does not reflect the most sophisticated scientific thought in able, the question arises whether any other more or less unified these areas. But it seems to me that, as it is usually presented, the understanding could take in the entire cosmos as we know it. Among current orthodoxy about the cosmic order is the product of govern­ the traditional candidates for comprehensive understanding of the ing assumptions that are unsupported, and that it flies in the face of C/f(' relation of mind to the physical world, I believe the weight of common sense. 2. See Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Uni­ i. For a clear statement, see Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon verse without Design (New York: Norton, 1986), for a canonical exposition, which seems to Books, 1992), chapter 3. convince practically everyone. MIND AND COSMOS INTRODUCTION , I would like to defend the untutored reaction of incredulity to long historical period in the distant past, the available evidence is very the reductionist neo-Darwinian account of the origin and evolution indirect, and general assumptions have to play an important part. My 3 of life. It is prima facie highly implausible that life as we know it is skepticism is not based on religious belief, or on a belief in any definite K the result of a sequence of physical accidents together with the alternative. It is just a belief that the available scientific evidence, in mechanism of natural selection. We are expected to abandon this spite of the consensus of scientific opinion, does not in this matter ra­ naive response, not in favor of a fully worked out physical/chemical tionally require us to subordinate the incredulity of common sense. explanation but in favor of an alternative that is really a schema for That is especially true with regard to the origin of life. wf explanation, supported by some examples. What is lacking, to my The world is an astonishing place, and the idea that we have in ,£v knowledge, is a credible argument that the story has a nonnegligible our possession the basic tools needed to understand it is no more f probability of being true. There are two questions. First, given what credible now than it was in Aristotle's day. That it has produced you, is known about the chemical basis of biology and genetics, what is and me, and the rest of us is the most astonishing thing about it. If the likelihood that self-reproducing life forms should have come contemporary research in molecular biology leaves open the possi­ into existence spontaneously on the early earth, solely through the bility of legitimate doubts about a fully mechanistic account of the operation of the laws of physics and chemistry? The second ques­ origin and evolution of life, dependent only on the laws of chemis­ tion is about the sources of variation in the evolutionary process try and physics, this can combine with the failure of psychophysical that was set in motion once life began: In the available geological reductionism to suggest that principles of a different kind are also time since the first life forms appeared on earth, what is the likeli­ at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order hood that, as a result of physical accident, a sequence of viable that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. genetic mutations should have occurred that was sufficient to permit I realize that such doubts will strike many people as outrageous, but natural selection to produce the organisms that actually exist? that is because almost everyone in our secular culture has been There is much more uncertainty in the scientific community about browbeaten into regarding the reductive research program as sacro­ the first question than about the second. Many people think it will be sanct, on the ground that anything else would not be science. very difficult to come up with a reductionist explanation of the origin My project has the familiar form of trying to meet a set of condi­ of life, but most people have no doubt that accidental genetic varia­ tions that seem jointly impossible. In addition to antireductionism, tion is enough to support the actual history of evolution by natural two further constraints are important: first, an assumption that selection, once reproducing organisms have come into existence. certain things are so remarkable that they have to be explained as non- However, since the questions concern highly specific events over a accidental if we are to pretend to a real understanding of the world; second, the ideal of discovering a single natural order that unifies 3. For an illuminating account of Darwin's own views about the most basic forms of explana­ everything on the basis of a set of common elements and principles— tion, see Elliott Sober, "Darwin's Discussions of God," in Did Darwin Write the "Origin" Backwards!: Philosophical Essays on Darwin's Theory (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, an ideal toward which the inevitably very incomplete forms of our 1011), 111-18.
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